


Metamemory

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, M/M, Meta, Other, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:10:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>my name is dave and i am as real as it gets<br/>but if pretending my life is fiction will get people interested in it<br/>well<br/>i guess thats just what ill have to do</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> not sure how much thisll actually interest anybody  
> but i figure it cant hurt to try can it  
> \- tg

I'm not even sure where to begin. Since you're reading this, chances are you probably know more about what's going on than I do. It'd be dumb for me to think I could hope to teach you anything. I just figure you should hear my side of things. Maybe you can help me learn more about myself. Maybe I'll find someone who can relate.

I didn't apply to an art college expecting to learn much. Pretentious, I know. I was an okay enough painter, but art wasn't a real passion of mine. More than anything, I saw it as a way to get out of my shitty situation back home... if home is what that place should even be called. I wasn't related to those people, and they made no effort to treat me like I was. I gave up on them pretty early on. First impressions count for a lot with me, I guess, and I tend to hold on to my grudges, even when I can't really afford to. They treated me like an idiot the very first day I met them, and my opinion of them only plummeted from there. It made life uncomfortable, hating people who were constantly hovering around me, but like I said...

Grudges. Even when I can't afford them.

When high school ended, I was determined to get as far away from home as possible. I applied for everything that seemed even vaguely plausible. My grades were decent. My art skills, apparently, were better.

I guess that's how I ended up being accepted into a fine arts program. Someone paid for me to move into a little dorm with the hugest douchebag I'd ever laid eyes on. He was taller than me and thicker than me. He giggled like an idiot whenever I dared to open my mouth. We weren't all that different, despite his constant dumbassery. I realize that now. In those first moments, though, the beer, the belching, and the bitching made me dislike him so strongly he could probably feel it in the air. He was an asshole. I kept to myself.

Everyone else was an asshole, too. The classmates. The lunch ladies. The doorman. So I stopped leaving my building.

Then I stopped leaving my apartment.

Finally, I stopped leaving my bedroom.

I was never a bulky guy. I didn't lift weights or whatever as a kid, and I never had a father figure type to look up to and mess around with. I didn't play any sports or spar for fun or anything. My eating habits were unhealthy at best. I only ate often enough to not starve, and I played video games incessantly. For me, they were a way to escape. For my guardians, they were a serious issue. They tried to get me into track, but it didn't stick. Nothing stuck. By the time I graduated, they would've been pleased as punch if I'd taken up shuffleboard. I was no jock, and I had few hobbies, but I didn't chow down on junk shit constantly or whatever. I wasn't fat when I moved into the dorm... but I was almost twiglike. 

When I stopped eating regular meals, I got downright pathetic looking.

I found ways to amuse myself, even in that stupid white room with the pull-down bed and the sweet sounds of the broest of frat bros banging chicks loudly (and men, a little more timidly) next door.

The internet was kind of a fucking godsend when I was at my bleakest. I'd Google some random ass thing, _click click click_ , and then read or watch or play for hours. Headphones, a cold drink, and a pillow were all I wanted. I still went to my classes, after dropping a few to make my work load lighter. I did my homework and my classwork without any real gusto, but it got turned in. I was a decent enough student, all things considered. I just didn't talk to anyone.

Not face to face, at least.

Omegle was fun for a while. Talking to people from all over the world was appealing, and the anonymity was something I appreciated. I could gush about all of my feelings to a non-person for hours, until I got tired and hit 'disconnect'. When I finally became bored of never actually seeing the people I was meeting, I discovered how awesome webcams could be.

Video chats were great. I met some okay guys. It only got old when it started to feel like everyone was fucking with me.

I'd begin a new conversation, go get some apple juice, and come back to a giant TL;DR wall of text about how I was the " _B3ST D4V3_ ". It happened again and again.  Everyone seemed to know me- or my name, at least. 

In the beginning, I'd shuffle off to a new partner at the first mention of my appearance. Eventually, I started humoring them in an attempt to learn more about whoever they thought I was. Things'd go normally enough. I'd ask them where they were from. They'd ask me the same. I'd concede that I was from Texas. Then they'd ask me about my brother or my best friend or my rapping.

I don't have a brother. I've never had a single friend I could rely on. I can't rap for shit.

Something was terrifying about all of it. I'd escape from the most awkward of the chats as quickly as possible with a 'heh' and a 'see you' and go watch TV mindlessly until I was able to forget the way my stomach flipped restlessly at some Stranger's fucking unsightly L33TSP34K.

 

_________________________________

 

When I bothered to check in with my teachers, I apparently wasn't failing a thing. Maybe that's a testament to how skilled I was at handling the whole facade I had going on. Maybe it's just a testament to how shitty the professors were.

Who knows.

Some girl with clunky glasses and perpetual bedhead took to my art, and me by extension. She talked to me during class, and supported me when critique days came rolling around. Whenever someone called me out on being too morbid, she'd save the day by interrupting with a dreamy comment and derailing the conversation completely.

She followed me around and forced me to eat every once in a while. I liked her more than most of the people there, so I was alright with sitting in the cafeteria with her like a sad sack while she pushed nasty looking hamburgers across the table at me. I enjoyed her company. She cared about me... or about the fate of my art, anyway. If I died during an extended bout of self-induced starvation, my paintings would go with me. She clearly liked them too much to let that happen.

One day, still beaming in the wake of a halfhearted joke I'd thrown her way, she asked me for my phone number. I told her I was taken. She said she knew I wasn't. I told her I was gay. She said she figured as much. I directed her to my Facebook like a right modern gent and went up to my room to sulk online. 

I hadn't actually signed on to Facebook in at least a year. I'd always found it kind of pointless. I didn't have any real friends in junior high or high school. People liked me well enough, yeah. As a matter of fact, a good deal of them thought that I was _cool_. But, being my sulky self, I ignored them. I was an idiot. I could've used someone to talk to back then. As a result of my tweenage angst, I had a whopping 43 Facebook "Friends". Most of them were English-challenged Nigerian scamlords disguised as flighty orange broads. 

The layout was completely different from the way I'd last seen it, but it was familiar enough that I knew there was something strange going on once I hit 'Log In'.

Tons of notifications.

I stared at the screen a little more blankly than usual.

Some time during my hiatus, my Wall had become covered in bitches.


	2. Chapter 2

When I gave it some thought, I realized I must've self-leaked my Facebook to someone out there in the wild of the internet. I didn't remember doing it until I saw a screenshot of the offending conversation right there under a pile of spastic comments about how "legit" I looked.

One post in particular stood out to me, derpy meme profile pic aside:

 

 

 

 

 

When I read that, somewhere inside it finally registered that there was another _me_. An imaginary one. Probably a ridiculous anime character or something, I figured.

I was tired and wanted to get some sleep. I wasn't taking any of this bull as more than a minor nuisance. But I was also curious. Curious enough to look into it. I decided I'd just browse around a little, see what I could find. Go back to my pillow. Forget about the internet.

And that's how I ended up spending a whole night Googling my name to learn more about the fictional fucker who shared it.

I'll be honest with you. There was no epiphany- not at first. Sure, an image search turned up some startling stuff. I thought that was the end of it. I clicked around some more. The moment I started skimming through the Wiki page dedicated to him...

...I felt absolutely _nothing_.

He looked like me. Almost exactly like me. His shades were close enough. He was expressionless. His stylized coolkid self was as similar to mine as the real world allowed. 

Our personalities were a little different, of course. I guess I'm meeker than him, less of an alpha dog type. I'm going to go ahead and say he's more of a tool than I am. And then there was the rapping, and the inexplicable fear of puppets. I didn't share either. But we _were_ both aloof assholes, for sure. He collected dead things like me. He had a thing for time like me, whatever that was about. He was born on the same day I was. He shared my last name... he was from my hometown... he had the same typing quirks, he was into photography...

The similarities went on and on and finally I got to the 'Trivia' section and the _fucking abnormal eyes_ and my brain joined the rave my heart had been tweaking out at all along. I pulled my knees to my chest, slid my laptop to the foot of my bed, and stared at the whirring thing like it'd just vocalized its disgust at the questionable contents of my porn folder. 

My name was Dave Strider.

I was only 18 years old, and I was suddenly having the single most literally _existential_ existential crisis of all time.


	3. Chapter 3

It's funny how ditching one shitty situation can drive you into another one entirely. I left home to avoid assholes. The place I chose as sanctuary was full of them.

I left the internet to avoid thinking about that comic. The real world I retreated to was full of reminders of it.

It was little things, at first. Things too numerous to describe. Then it was one big dorky thing.

My roommate's name, I discovered, was not what I thought it was. He had introduced himself that first day as Jack  ("oh, so like... jackass," my mnemonic device, had made that much impossible to forget). He was born _John_. I don't think I have to tell you what his last name was, or what a huge mindfuck it was for me. 

There I was, more than a 1,000 miles away from home, with no one to talk to but him and a girl whose name I hadn't really bothered to commit to memory. I did my best to steer clear of him, but it was inevitable that we'd cross paths like ships in the night. I'd pop out for a bite from the fridge, and _welp_ , there he'd be, crouched on the living room floor, carefully painting one of his guys with his stupid tongue sticking out of his stupid lips.

His obsession with collecting boys, all of a similar height and shade and insufferable demeanor, made my skin crawl. On the surface, it was just a normal sort of creepy. Only vaguely unhealthy. It made me wonder how anyone could like him. He was obviously a cheating bastard. He was blatantly using them. Then something'd click way back in my head and a sense of déjà vu would take hold of me. 

Have you ever had a dream about something really mundane? Maybe you're sitting in a dream-car talking to your dream-friend about your dream-day. It's really specific, that chat, and you don't forget it after you wake up. Have you ever had that same weird little interaction again a few days later- while fully awake? It's the strangest feeling in the world, and it was what I felt every time I'd look at him. Or at one of them. Every once in a while, his favorite would knock on our apartment's front door while he wasn't there.

"Hey, Strider. Is your stupid roomie here?"

"Nah, Korey. He's out right now. No idea where."

The kid would curse for a good few seconds and then storm off, and I'd be left with the door open wondering why the hell his rant had seemed so familiar.

But I learned soon enough that John wasn't as much of an idiot as most people took him for. He was tolerable, really. We had some stuff in common. We'd talk sometimes. At night, mostly, when we were both run down enough to act like that was any excuse for small talk.

Eventually, he told me all about his home life. It wasn't much better than my own, I learned. That was comforting, somehow, even though I knew reveling in schadenfreude wasn't an attractive trait. I'd pictured a model nuclear family for him. A well-dressed mother. A straightlaced businessman for a father. A tire swinging from a tree in the front yard. Maybe a kid brother, even.

But no, he assured me, it wasn't like that at all. And you're lucky you don't know your parents! _It must be fun to spend every day wondering, Dave._

...so, yeah, there were lingering traces of dumb, and I was still clinging to my grudges, but he was proving to be an alright person. If a little bit really normal and really oblivious (and also an emotionally abusive player). He was a lot like me, in that he wasn't into addressing actual issues. We didn't talk about our feelings or anything.

Which is why his big blabby emotional stunt caught me by surprise.

I was just sitting there, minding my own business in my bedroom. That Korey kid was out on the couch, talking to himself. John was nowhere in sight. I took the opportunity to examine Korey a little bit. What was the harm? He was going to be around for the rest of the year, anyway. That much was clear. Not like a once-over by me would scare him off when he was so obviously attached.

I guess I get kind of a glazed over look to my eyes when I zone out like that. People have mentioned it before. It's kind of pleasant to see something so familiar and so _not_ , what can I say. Sure, it's unsettling, but... it feels like talking to an old friend, without all the trouble of friendship. You know? I get lost in it. So that's probably why I went all blank, and didn't even notice when John appeared out of nowhere and sat right down next to me.

I don't know how long it'd been, but Korey'd finally shut up. From the tilt of his head, it looked like he was either asleep or watching the TV.

"Do you get it, too, Dave?"

My eyes snapped back into focus, and I turned my attention to him. I'm a quiet guy. I didn't have much to say, especially since I couldn'tve guessed he had any idea what was going on up inside my head.

"It's just something about him, man. I don't know. It happens to me, too... no hard feelings. He just calms me down," he rambled. He paused to shift his eyes back to the couch. Korey stirred, and then snored. "Kinda narcotizing. Haha!"

"I feel like I've met him before," I stated. I tried to be as neutral as possible. I thought it was best to just leave it at that. "I know I haven't, though. He's not from anywhere I've been."

His face warmed up at that. In that moment, I knew _he knew_ what I was talking about, and it was scary. I'm not going to lie. Up until then, I'd chosen to dismiss the whole comic thing as chance. Maybe the guy who wrote it met me somewhere. Maybe I was his unintentional muse. It could be that. Fuck if I know. My memory's always been shitty. Hell, I don't remember much before my 13th birthday.

While I was thinking, he'd been busy babbling. I was on autopilot, grunting along to feign interest, when a sentence caught me and I tuned back in.

"Sometimes," he blurted, "I'll be doing something and I'll have this flicker of... like déjà vu, I guess." There was a bang in the kitchen. I glanced out around my door frame. Korey was noisily tossing out expired meat. I caught a glimpse of his form again- wiry, petite. A brunette, just like all the others.

John was smiling wistfully. "I'll be with someone, and I'll feel like I've been there before. It's bitter sweet, you know? They trust me and they figure I'm there in the moment with them, and suddenly I'm miles or years away living another life or... whatever it is... with someone else."

Some internal dam broke, and I realized I had to actually, you know, like, respond. I pushed away from the bed to shift through a pile of bullshit in the corner of my bedroom. I had a pretty huge collection of books for a kid away from home, and I knew the one I wanted was with me.

"There we go. Here, John. Look at this."

He took the closed book from my hands, and it flipped limply open to the exact section I'd wanted him to read. I'd highlighted my favorite page years ago to ensure I'd never lose it, and I'd underlined the most pertinent lines just the night before. They'd replayed themselves multiple times in different voices that night for hours until I'd gotten out of bed. By that moment with him on my bed, I'd memorized it word for word:

                                                            " _At first you will not know what they mean,_

_And you may never know,_

_And we may never tell you:--_

_These sudden flashes in your soul,_

_Like lambent lightning on snowy clouds_

_At midnight when the moon is full._

_They come in solitude, or perhaps_

_You sit with your friend, and all at once_

_A silence falls on speech, and his eyes_

_Without a flicker glow at you:--_

_You two have seen the secret together,_

_He sees it in you, and you in him._

_And there you sit thrilling lest the Mystery_

_Stand before you and strike you dead_

_With a splendor like the sun's._

_Be brave, all souls who have seen such visions._

_As your body's alive as mine is dead,_

_You're catching a little whiff of the ether_

_Reserved for God Himself_."

 

He read through it with more interest than I'd expected. I saw my own emotions flicker across his face. The boy cursed in the kitchen.

John slammed the little hardcover shut.

"I hope you find something that makes you feel the way I do wi-," he seemed to choke a little on his words, "...sometimes." He completely closed up, like he'd said too much. He added a fake giggle to the end of his statement. 

I watched him lope away into the common area, and let the book fall onto my bed. It was quiet for a bit. Then he must've said something wrong. They argued for a while. A strangled sob met my ears.  I could hear him trying to console his visitorloverboyfriendpalhonchowhatever for 15 minutes straight. I waited until after he had been thoroughly bitched out by his _something_ and the front door had slammed shut twice to say into my pillow what I wanted to say to his face. It was muffled, but obviously a lame whisper- like my voice was betraying the fact that I was a touchy-feely coward. 

"...I hope _my_ stupid flashes of lightning don't end up hurting anyone."


	4. Chapter 4

From that conversation with John onwards, things got even more ridiculous inside my head. 

I've always been an insomniac. Falling asleep _scares_ me. It's one of those deeply ingrained fears you can barely recall the trigger for. Probably something that happened in my childhood, [ _insert tragic back story here_ ]. It's a mystery to me, but it's not one I've thought on much over the years.

After John's Big Blubbering Baby Stunt, I slept. I slept a lot. I didn't question it when it kicked in. I just realized I could actually close my eyes and rest whenever I felt like it, and it was a nice alternative to having to be wide awake with him around.

The dreams were the only problem. There were nightmares, sometimes, and those were horrible. They were just color and sensation. Acidic green, mostly, and a red hot burning. Reaching for something and not being able to grab it. Running up stairs. Stabbing pains. A few where I was killed outright, a few where it dragged on and on and I was all alone, a few where I killed myself.

They were painful, but bearable. Because they couldnt've possibly been real, could they?

It was the pleasant ones that were the worst, believe it or not. Because they felt like they were plausible. My sense of reality was more skewed than ever when I woke up from them. I had dreams about having real friends, and having a real family. Dream-me was much more successful than real-me. He was brave and a warrior by anyone's standards, and he was noble almost to a fault.

The one I remember most clearly- the one that I still have sometimes- doesn't have an actual... plot, really. It's just emotions again, like someone's planting Good Feels in me telepathically. There's sadness in it, like... loss.

But the overarching theme of it is _success_. I don't know how to explain it better than that. Victory. 

Like I've _won_.

I always wake up from it feeling inadequate, as if I'm missing something. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> found my old dream diary 
> 
> might scan some stuff from it tonight
> 
> \- tg


	5. Chapter 5

Hahaha, _holy shit_. I almost completely forgot about this thing.  
  
Me again. Hey. A lot's happened since the last time you heard from me.  
  
Sorry about that, by the way. Disappearing, and all. If you knew what was up, you wouldn't really blame me.  
  
I think I'll start with what brought me back here and then work backwards from there.  
  
I've got a screenshot for you tonight. It'll probably fill in a few gaps.  
  
You know, about what happened after... the thing I wrote last?  
  
Honesty time: I didn't bother rereading whatever that last chapter was. In case that fact wasn't obvious.  
  
Anyway, enjoy. Handle not withheld because fuck this guy.

-


End file.
